


Harvestmere

by bohemiantea



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Alamarri, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Harvestmere, Implied Death, Implied Sexual Content, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Other, general horror, holiday celebrations, spoopy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 19:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16839202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bohemiantea/pseuds/bohemiantea
Summary: A resident of a Thedosian village has an annual celebration at Harvestmere, feeding her crops.





	Harvestmere

**Author's Note:**

> https://bohemiantea-scorpiocoffee.tumblr.com/post/179264912156/harvestmere

The community was small before the Blight and smaller after. The wild stretches of the Hinterlands the Chantry could barely reach they called home for generations, some say since the Alamarri. Most scoff because signs of that would’ve been seen by now. Some busybody scholar, a treasure hunter: they would have come looking. 

_The carvings, see? Runes of protection and good fortune,_ they’d say. If they’d come.

The signs were there. They had been seen and then carefully hidden, stone by stone and board by board. She had a foundation of whorls and glyphs, carved by herself, by the Alamarri, by time itself.

_Protection and good fortune for whom?_

_For the Feeder of the Skies…_ Puzzling, they might think. If they’d come.

Her gift had always been small and so carefully guarded and nurtured. Rare visits from the Chantry and even rarer from the Templars meant she never had to leave. Inheriting and learning the glyphs was just part of the natural order, part of her past and path. She worked hard, year after year, and celebrated the fruits of her labors with her community.

_Your crops grow tall again, miss._

_Aye, ready to harvest soon._

The Blight was the hardest year. So much had been lost, she’d knelt in her fields and wept til her fisted hands drew blood. _Promise_ , she said, shoving those hands into her dirt, her belly cramped with hunger and loneliness.

 _You feed the birds as much as your fields!_ the community joked. The first time, she’d wiped a happy tear.

 _Aye, crows avoid Blight. Let them feast._ Her grains were tall and her herb garden full from then on.

 _Don’t go in her fields,_ the children whisper to each other. _It waits in there._

No one minds children’s talk. Bird nests, wind soughing, the river’s rushing just down the way: any could be the whisper, the rough sound. The patient watching. If someone came.

Wars and birds are good for carrion, for blood and bone meal for a lush-growing field. Times are hard in Thedas. It seems there is always a war. Her fields are always green.

 _Are you lonely sometimes?_ Someone might ask. If they came.

 _Not until Harvestmere,_ she might say, her hand in theirs deep in the fields. Bodies bared to the skies, rich earth below in a joining as old as time. Whispered invocations turned to a shout with arched back - a promise kept. Protection and good fortune.

If anyone came, they would go with the harvest. Community settles in with the cold and the birds move on until next year. She feeds them as they feed her. It is a fine, old arrangement.


End file.
